Friday, 30 July 2010

'"Sir," said Caspian, "I've always wanted to have just one glimpse of their world. Is that wrong?""You cannot want wrong things any more, now that you have died, my son," said Aslan.'CS Lewis, The Silver Chair, p.451 (of The Complete Chronicles of Narnia)

Wednesday, 28 July 2010

'We pray to God because we believe in him through Jesus Christ; that is to say, our prayer can never be an entreaty to God, for we have no need to come to him in that way. We are privileged to know that he knows our needs before we ask him. This is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty. It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use, what matters is the faith which lays hold on God and touches the heart of the Father who knew us long before we came to him.

Genuine prayer is never "good works", an exercise or a pious attitude, but it is always the prayer of a child to a Father. Hence it is never given to self-display, whether before God, ourselves, or other people. If God were ignorant of our needs, we should have to think out beforehand how we should tell him about them, what we should tell him, and whether we should tell him or not. Thus faith, which is the mainspring of Christian prayer, excludes all reflection and premeditation.'

Thursday, 22 July 2010

'Jesus combines two qualities that rarely go together: true compassion and life-rearranging counsel. He intends to combine them in you. Some helpers care intensely, but don't know what to say. They feel helpless compassion. They offer platitudes. They reinforce the self-pity and entitlement of the victimized. Other helpers have advice to offer, but don't enter the plight of sufferers. They offer cold counsel. They become impatient when a sufferer is slow to change. They dismiss the significance of the affliction of the afflicted. Neither is able to really comfort; neither is able really to guide.'

David Powlison, 'God's Grace and Your Sufferings' in Piper & Taylor (Ed.), The Supremacy of God in Suffering, p.165.

'A woman who seeks to dominate her husband dishonours not only him but herself as well, just as the man who does not love his wife as he should dishonors himself as well as her, and both dishonour the glory of God which is meant to rest upon the state of matrimony. There is something wrong with a world in which the woman's ambition is to be like a man, and in which the man regards the woman as the toy of his lust for power and freedom. It is a sign of social disintegration when the women's service is thought to be degrading, and when the man who is faithful to his wife is looked upon as a weakling or a fool.'

'...the privilege and the promise of marriage are higher than the sanctity, privilege and promise of love. It is not your love which sustains the marriage, but from now on the marriage that sustains your love.'

'If your hopes and dreams are bound to your children or your spouse, you will be disappointed, perhaps even bitter. If you expect your spouse and/or your children to provide the comfort and support that can only come from God you will be deeply hurt. You will set yourself up to be disappointed and crushed when your family fails you. No spouse, no child can hope to provide comfort that can only be found in God. God will have no other gods before him. Your first loyalty must be to God and God alone.'

Tuesday, 20 July 2010

'This shift in focus from the training of children to the enjoyment of children diminishes the pleasure of parenting. Children are selfish, devious and ungrateful by nature. Unless children are instructed and disciplined to follow God, they will follow their own natural ways. They will always frustrate the expectations of parental enjoyment. Parents looking primarily for enjoyment from such creatures are in for a major disapointment. Loving, enjoyable relationships between parents and children are a by-product of good parenting, not the goal. Even at that, the enjoyment of children is a blessing from God that should not be assumed or taken for granted. Many good parents have endured heartbreaking situations with their children.'

Monday, 19 July 2010

'No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty of fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up - that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death?...Death is only dreadful for those who live in fear and dread of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God's Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realise that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the whole world?

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvellous, that we can transform death.'

'Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand - from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: "How can I be good?" and "How can I do something good?" Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: "What is the will of God?"'

Saturday, 17 July 2010

'In the face of death we cannot simply speak in some fatalistic way, "God wills it"; but we must juxtapose it with the other reality, "God does not will it." Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that is stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death. Here the sharp antithesis between "God wills it" and "God does not will it" comes to a head and finds its resolution, God accedes to that which God does not will, and from now on death itself must therefore serve God. From now on, the "God wills it" encompasses even the "God does not will it." God wills the conquering of death through the death of Jesus. Only in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ has death been drawn into God's power, and it must now serve God's own aims. It is not some fatalistic surrender but rather a living faith in Jesus Christ who died and rose for us, that is able to cope profoundly with death.'

'Just as time-lapse photography makes visible, in ever more compressed and penetrating form, movements that would otherwise not be thus grasped by our vision, so the war makes manifest in particularly drastic and unshrouded forms that which for years has become ever more dreadfully clear to us as the essence of the "world." It is not war that first brings death, nor war that first invents the pains and torments of human bodies and souls, nor war that first unleashes lies, injustice, and violence. It is not war that first makes our existence so utterly precarious and renders human beings powerless, forcing them to watch their desires and plans being thwarted and destroyed by more "exalted powers." But war makes all of this, which existed already apart from it and before it, vast and unavoidable to us who would gladly prefer to overlook it all.'

'The Psalter filled the life of the early Christianity. But more important than all of this is that Jesus died on the cross with words from the Psalms on his lips. Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power.'

'The beginning and the end, O Lord, are thine,
The span between, life was mine.
I wandered in the darkness and did not discover myself,
With thee, O Lord, is clarity, and light is thy house.
A short time only, and all is done;
Then the whole struggle dies away to nothing.
Then I will refesh myself by the waters of life,
And will talk with Jesus for ever and ever.'Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, p.328.

Friday, 16 July 2010

'"Big sin, little sins" thinking shows sin as a matter of good or bad consequences. This kind of thinking is self-pleasing and leads to a lack of love for God and His Word. See this for what it is. Examine your everday talk to see if it reflects love for God or simply a reaction to consequences. Examine your life and language to see if you have bought into the "big sins, little sins" mindset. If you have, turn your eyes, your heart, your life to Jesus. Repent and ask Him to help you change. Ask for the wisdom and strenth to love Him with all your heart.'

John A Younts, Everday Talk: Talking Freely and Naturally about God with Your Children, p.77.

'There is no work better than another to please God. To pour water, to wash dishes, to be a shoemaker, or an apostle, all is one; to wash dishes and to preach is one, as touching the deed to please God.'

William Tyndale in Julian Hardyman, Glory Days: Living the whole of your life for Jesus, p.117.

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

'The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God's forgiveness.'

'The mind and flesh of a man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride. '

'In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted. But God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps.107.16).'

'"Confess your faults to one another" (James 5.16). He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, may be still left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners.

But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; he does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; he wants you alone. "My son, give me thine heart' (Prov.23.26). God has come to you to save the sinner. Be glad! This message is liberation through truth. You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before men will do you no good before him. He wants to see you as you are, he wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner. Thank God for that; he loves the sinner but hates the sin.'

'The basis that Christians can speak to one another is that each one knows the other as a sinner, who, with all his human dignity, is lonely and lost if he is not given help. This is not to make him contemptible nor to disparage him in any way. On the contrary, it is to accord him the one real dignity that man has, namely, that though he is a sinner, he can share in God's grace and glory and be God's child. This recognition gives to our brotherly speech the freedom and candour that it needs. We speak to one aonther on the basis of the help we both need. We admonish one another against the disobedience that is our common destruction. We are gentle and we are severe with one another, for we know both God's kindness and God's severity. Why should we be afraid of each one another, since both of us have only God to fear? Why should we think that our brother would not understand us, when we understood very well what was meant when somebody spoke God's comfort or God's admonition to us, perhaps in words that were halting or unskilled? Or do we really think that there is a single person in this world who does not need either encouragement or admonition? Why, then, has God bestowed Christian brotherhood upon us?'

'...Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by him who is himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.'

'The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to his Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that he not only gives us his Word but also lends us his ear. So it is his work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.'

'If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most grevious, the most reprehensible. Brotherly love will find any number of extenuations for the sins of others; only for my sin is there no apology whatsoever. Therefore my sin is the worst. He who would serve his brother in the fellowship must sink all the way down to these depths of humility. How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?'

'Every day brings to the Christian many hours in which he will be alone in an unchristian environment. These are the times of testing. This is the test of true meditation and true Christian community. Has the fellowship served to make the individual free, strong, and mature, or has it made him weak and dependent? Has it taken him by the hand for a while in order that he may learn again to walk by himself, or has it made him uneasy and unsure? This is one of the most searching and critical questions that can be put to any Christain fellowship.'

'It is one of the particular difficulties of meditation that our thoughts are likely to wander and go their own way, toward other persons or to some events in our life. Much as this may distress and shame us again and again, we must not lose heart and become anxious, or even conclude that meditation is really not something for us. When this happens it is often a help not to snatch back our thoughts convulsively, but quite calmly to incorporate into our prayer the people and events to which our thoughts keep straying and thus in all patience return to the starting point of the meditation.'

'In our meditation we ponder the chosen text on the strength of the promise that it has something utterly personal to say to us for this day and for our Christian life, that it is not only God's Word for the Church, but also God's Word for us individually. We expose ourselves to the specific word until it addresses us personally. And when we do this, we are doing no more than the simplest, untutored Christian does every day; we read God's Word as God's Word for us.'

'...meditation does not let us down into the viod and abyss of loneliness; it lets us be alone with the Word. And in doing so it gives us solid ground on which to stand and clear directions as to the steps we must take.'

'There is an indifferent, or even negative, attitude toward silence which sees in it a disparagement of God's revelation in the Word. This is the view which misinterprets silence as a ceremonial gesture, as a mystical desire to get beyond the Word. This is to miss the essential relationship of silence to the Word. Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father's room. We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us.'

Monday, 12 July 2010

'What love is, only Christ tells in his Word. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is. Therefore spiritual love is bound solely to the Word of Jesus Christ. Where Christ bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of love, I will maintain it. Where his truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love's sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love.'

'Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.'

'The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try and realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christain fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great general disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves.'

'...the Christian is the man who no longer seeks his salvation, his deliverance, his justification in himself, but in Jesus Christ alone. He knows that God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel feel that he is righteous at all. The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God's claims and God's justification. He lives wholly by God's Word pronounced upon him, whether that Word declares him guilty or innocent.'

'We are to serve our enemy in all things without hypocrisy and with utter sincerity. No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy. If out of love for our brother we are willing to sacrifice goods, honour and life, we must be prepared to do the same for our enemy.'

'Shall Satan keep a crafty watch, and shall Christians not keep a holy spiritual watch? Our whole life is beset with temptations. Satan watches all opportunities to break our peace, to wound our consciences, to lessen our comforts, to impair our graces, to slur our evidences, and to damp our assurances. Oh! what need then have we to be always upon out watch-tower, lest we be surprised by this subtle serpent. Watchfulness includes a waking, a rousing up of the soul. It is a continual, careful observing of our hearts and ways, in all the turnings of our lives, that we still keep close to God and his Word.

Watchfulness is nothing else but the soul running up and down, to and fro, busy everywhere; it is the heart busied and employed with diligent observation of what comes from within us, and what comes from without us and into us. Ah souls! you are no longer safe and secure than when you are upon your watch.'

'Humility keeps the soul free from many darts of Satan's casting, and snares of his spreading; as the low shrubs are free from many violent gusts and blasts of winds, which shake and rend the taller trees. The devil hath least power to fasten a temptation on him that is most humble. He that hath a gracious measure of humility, is neither affected with Satan's proffers nor terrified with his threatenings.'

Saturday, 10 July 2010

'There is no other rule or test for who is a member of the people of God or the church of Christ than this: where there is a little band of those who accept this word of the Lord, teach it purely and confess against those who persecute it, and for that reason suffers what is their due.'

Friday, 9 July 2010

'If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature, and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ.'

'...you can't understand God's Word rightly until you can use it, until you see how it applies to this situation and that...If someone says he understands "You shall not steal" but has no idea to what situations that commandment applies (such as embezzling, cheating on taxes, shoplifting), then he hasn't really understood the biblical command. Understanding Scripture, understanding its meaning, is applying it to situations. A person who understands the Bible is a person who is able to use the Bible to answer his questions, to guide his life...theology is application.'

'Humility will make a man have high thoughts of others and low thoughts of a man's self; it will make a man see much glory and excellency in others, and much baseness and sinfulness in a man's self; it will make a man see others rich, and himself poor; others strong, and himself weak; others wise, and himself foolish. Humility will make a man excellent at covering others' infirmities, and at recording their gracious services, and at delighting in their services; it makes a man joy in every light that outshines his own, and every wind that blows others good.'

'Ah! Christians, God loses much, and you lose much, and Satan gains much by this, that you do not, that you will not, walk lovingly together so far as your ways lie together. It is your sin and shame that you do not, that you will not, pray together, and hear together, and confer together, and mourn together, because that in some far lesser things you are not agreed together. What folly and madness is it in those whose way of a hundred miles lies fourscore and nineteen together, yet will not walk so far together, because they cannot go the other mile together; yet such is the folly and madness of many Christians in these days, who will not do many things they may do, because they cannot do everything they should do. I fear God will whip them into a better temper before he hath done with them. He will break their bones, and pierce their hearts, but he will cure them of this malady.'

'In a calm prepare for a storm. The tempter is restless, impudent, and subtle; he will suit his temptations to your constitutions and inclinations. Satan loves to sail with the wind. If your knowledge be weak, he will tempt you with error; if your conscience be tender, he will tempt you to scrupulosity, and too much preciseness, as to do nothing but hear, pray, and read; if your consciences be wide and large, he will tempt you to carnal security; if you are bold-spirited, he will tempt you to presumption; if timorous, to desperation; if flexible, to inconstancy; if proud and stiff, to gross folly; therefore still fit for fresh assaults, make one victory a step to another. When you have overcome a temptation, take heed of unbending your bow, and look well to it, that your bow be always bent, and that it remains at strength. When you have overcome one temptation, you must be ready to enter the list with another.'

'...let no saints judge themselves not to be beloved, because they are tempted. It is natural for saints to be tempted, that are dearly beloved, as it is for the sun to shine, or a bird to sing. The eagle complains not of her wings, nor the peacock of his train, nor the nightingale of her voice, because they are natural to them; no more should saints of their tempttaions, becasue they are natural to them.'

'I cannot find in the whole book of God where he hath promised any such strength or power against this or that particular sin, as that the soul should be for ever, in this life, put out of a possibility of falling again and again into the same sins; and where God hath not a mouth to speak, I must not have a heart to believe. God will graciously pardon those sins to his people that he will not in this life effectually subdue in his people. I would go far to speak with that soul that can show me a promise, that when our sorrow and grief been so great, or so much, for this or that sin, that then God will preseve us from ever falling into the same sin. The sight of such a promise would be as life from the dead to many a precious soul, who desires nothing more than to keep close to Christ, and fears nothing more than backsliding from Christ.'

'To follow Jesus means self-renunciation and absolute adherence to him, and therefore a will dominated by lust can never be allowed to do what it likes. Even momentary desire is a barrier to the following of Jesus, and brings the whole body into hell, making us sell our heavenly birthright for a mess of pottage, and showing that we lack faith in him who will reward mortification with joy a hundredfold. Instead of trusting to the unseen, we prefer the tangible fruits of desire, and so we fall from the path of discipleship and lose touch with Jesus. Lust is impure because it is unbelief, and therefore it is to be shunned. No sacrifice is too great if it enables us to conquer a lust which cuts us off from Jesus.'